AuGF: Senate Indicts Budget Office Over N19bn Payment Approval to Four MDAs

Sunday Aborisade in Abuja

The Senate has indicted the Budget Office of the Federation for giving approval of N19 billion to four Ministries, Department, Agencies of the federal government without seeking the approval of the Minister of Finance.
The Senate had in October last year commenced an investigation into an alleged illegal payment of N19 billion to four unnamed federal agencies, by the Budget Office.

However, after the investigation by the Senate Public Accounts Committee, the Budget Office was unable to present evidence of approval from the Ministry of Finance before paying the N19 billion from the Service Wide Vote to the four unnamed federal agencies.

The Budget Office of the Federation in its response to the query claimed that it had written the office of the Auditor General of the Federation requesting for details of the four MDAs without response.
But, the Committee Chaired by Senator Mathew Urhoghide, noted that the Budget Office did not present the letter it claimed to have written to the office of the AuGF, requesting for the details.

Due to the inability of the Budget Office to present approval for the payment of the N19 billion to the four MDAs, the Senate adopted the report of Senate Public Accounts Committee on the matter asking for a refund of the said amount to the Federation Account.

The query was contained in the 2016 report of the Auditor General for the Federation which was submitted to Senate for consideration.
Part of the AuGF read: “Four MDAs were paid the sum of N19bn from the Service Wide Vote without the approval of the Honorable Minister of Finance, some of the payments were made on purported verbal directives from the Director General.

“This act is against the financial Regulation 301 and 302 which state that ‘recurrent expenditure is paid from the CRF and no expenditure may be incurred except on the authority of a warrant issued by the Minister of Finance.
“In view of the above, it is difficult to accept the payment to the MDAs as proper and legitimate charges against the public funds.
“The Director General should provide evidence of approval from the Minister of Finance for these expenditures or recover the sum of N19bn from the benefiting MDAs”